#206 Josh Szeps returns for another Uncomfortable Conversation

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I I Boris and this is straight talk.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Josh SEPs Well, back mate, straight mate. Good to see,
so good to be back. I can't believe you're just
complimenting me on how nice my skin looks. It's the
best way to start to today.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
It's amazing. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
But I don't even have a I don't have a regime,
I don't have a skin range.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
I can't believe it. I come.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
I actually have to tell everybody that I saw him
loitering around the area just outside there. He did have
a suit, he had a suit bag. He's going to
put a suit on for the show. But I said, mate,
done with it.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
You look great the way it is, correct the record.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm flying in Melbourne right after this and I'm hosting
a panel event for which I need a suit. That's
not to say that this show isn't important. On I
felt important, but I'm just feel like your vibe is
more informal. I mean, what are we doing, Marke?

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Informal? That's what I've got to intimidate you.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
If I was wearing a suit, well, I want to
talk about that formal vibe and I want to talk
about intimidation too.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Today that's the things. There are the topies you want
to talk to you.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
I'm reaching out to Josh because he's my mate, but
he also knows a lot of stuff and of course
uncomfortable conversations.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
That's your podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
And you're written an article recently which I'll park, but
I want to talk about a little bit later.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
You've written lots of articles, but.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
One I want to talk about in particular is about
your grandmother and just Eve's background. Like we do in
this show, there was a lot of military activity around
the world and I got in Major General Mick Ryan
to talk about what's going on around the world, particularly
in relation to this was straight after the USA dropped
the big bomb into Iran, and I thought it was

(01:27):
a relevant discussion.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
And Mick was sort of praising the.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Israelis, so if it's back into your wheelhouse, but praising
the Israelis for their military work, I don't think he's
praising Israel for it's general policies relativety perhaps, yeah. And
then I had a guy called Chris Joy, who I
considered to be the best economists in the country from
an Australian economics point of view. And Chris is also

(01:53):
talking about Trump and he was also praising Israel relative
to Trump relative to world economics. In other words, the
effect of their what the regimes, both regimes are doing
in terms of how it leads into his economic policy,
his own policy relative to what he invests in.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
He's not saying did you buy that?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Incidentally, the pro Trump tariff argument quick aside, not not really,
I don't buy it.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
But from his point of view, he manipulates.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
He has a he's built AI and he's got a
team of forty five PhDs who basically build probability events
relative to global bonds based on Trump's demeanor, his facial demeanor,
his words, and they predicted the ram bomb, It's gonna
happen on the Saturday or the Sunday, whenever it happened,

(02:46):
so that on the back of that they gone by
and sell. So they build up events global events relative and.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Then they short or along something depending on what yeah,
is going to happen.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
And they'd not always get it right, but generally speaking,
this all about return to the I.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Mean, that's fine if you have a twelve hour time
frame where you want to make money. It's probably not
fine if you're looking at a five to ten to
fifty year timeframe, whether or not markets have confidence in
the United States and in the integrity of its currency
and so on, so correct, it's a trade uncertain Tariff
wars is probably not wise if you want to remain
the number one.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
It's arbitrage.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
It's basically garbitrage running a basis point, so they can
buy many billions of dollars worth of the US bonds
or training bonds, whatever's in.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
The people made a ton of money after nine to
eleven as well, the people who knew that it was
going to happen. They were all kinds of crazy inside
you know, trades, the airline stock, you know, from people
from mysterious people in Saudi Arabia who made a lot
of money.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
And whether they're in the know or whether or not
they created the know, which is what he does. And
as a result of in those two podcasts, the amount
of negativity I got was crazy people saying, oh, you're
supporting Israel and I just thought, and that sort of
brings you back to this level of intimidation, not that
I'm feel intimidated, but the attempt to intimidate people via

(03:59):
social media of in terms of responses and in terms
of just interaction, engagement. And I wanted to ask you this.
Your podcast is all about uncomfortable conversations. It's about conversations
which people don'tant talk about, and there were people listening
to this.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
How do you deal with the negativity if at all?
I mean, do you get negativity in?

Speaker 3 (04:21):
But you do?

Speaker 1 (04:22):
I get negativity? Mark? Do you know who you're talking to?

Speaker 2 (04:25):
I know you do it, but some people say, you know,
sometimes when I complain about it, people say, you literally
named your show Uncomfortable Conversations, and now you're complaining that
people are being left uncomfortable?

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Do you complain?

Speaker 2 (04:36):
I don't because I have basically left social media except
as a promotional tool, so you know, we post clips
and things there, but I don't really engage with it,
and I don't. I can usually dismiss the hate as
being the just the deranged kind of yellings of somebody,
And you know, I sort of think if you're not
upsetting somebody, then you're not really saying anything interesting. There's

(04:56):
no old adage about journalism that journalism is something that's
somebody somewhere doesn't want said. Anything else is publicity or marketing, right,
you know, the whole point is that you can to
upset somebody with this most recent bout, though I have
felt it it's been one of the two or three
hardest professional moments of my life, with my being shoved
out of the ABC as one of the other big

(05:18):
recent ones, because I felt like there are really raw
feelings on both sides, and people are hurting, and my
team is hurting. By my team, I just mean a
lot of people who are close to me who feel
like I should be carrying water for their side of things.
Given that I'm a member of the Jewish community, they

(05:40):
expect that I'm going to have a certain defense of Israel.
And when you try to inject nuance and you try
to like articulate a vision that is nonpartisan or that
doesn't please either tribe, I have found it more emotionally
trying this time as inexhausting. As inexhausting, yeah, yeah, it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
But you don't feel traumatized. You just feel tired, yeah,
insulationally tired.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yes, that's right.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, and a little bit traumatized because it is difficult
being like I mean, my whole pointed with uncomfortable conversations.
Some people misunderstand that the title of the show and
think that I'm trying to foster intentionally uncomfortable moments in
the room or make the guests feel uncomfortable, which is
not the point. The point is to try to have
amicable and to whatever extent possible, comfortable conversations about issues

(06:33):
that it's really hard not to get uncomfortable about. So,
you know, we pick subjects, whether it's race or indigenous
rights or welcomes to country, or you know, migration or refugees,
or the Me Too movement, or male and female relations
in the workplace or LGBTQIA plus issues or transathletes or
whatever it might be. That if someone were to express

(06:54):
a strident opinion about them at a work function or even.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Or a family barber or a family barbie.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Everyone's everyone's bum Hooles would puck her up a little.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Bit, like everyone would be like, oh, are we going
to go there? You know, and I try to.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Like I just had on the show one of America's
foremost anti gay parenting activists.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
And anti gay parenting activist. So she is against gay parenting.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
That's right, So she's a family value, did you for?
People don't know, I'm married to a guy and we
have kids through sarregacy. And it was actually John Anderson,
the former Deputy PM who's a maid of mine, who
had her on his show, and he's.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
A podcast.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
You know, he's a Christian, he's a family values guy,
lifelong conservative, and he's intrigued by me because I don't
fit the mold of the crazy woke, you know, super
kind of captured echo chamber. He lefty that he thinks
that I would be if I was a gay guy

(07:57):
with a family who.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
Used to work at the ABC.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
And so he was like, you should talk to this
this woman like she's in Australia, she's preaching her you know,
I guess her gospel of family values and how like
every child deserves to have its biological mother and biological father.
So we sat down for two and a half hours,
Mark and had a really amicable, heated, thoughtful, combative conversation

(08:23):
about where she's coming from, where I'm coming from. That's
my gold standard, right, that's what I want to do.
And when it goes down, And just.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
Before we leave that, I haven't listened that episode, but
can I can you just tell me how did it go?

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Like?

Speaker 1 (08:37):
What's her point? Her point is it is it about child's rights.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yes, yes, So then how could a child have well, well, Mark,
how can a child have rights?

Speaker 2 (08:50):
I mean no, I think under to say that you could.
It's not an incoherent argument to say that every child
has a right to a biological mother and a biological father.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
I think it's is that by virtue of some bill
of rights for the United States tour it's.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
By virtue of her well, I think it's by virtue
of her religiosity. But she would her ethics, her Christian ethics,
But she would say it's by virtue of the nature
of the way that you know, humankind is constructed, that
you need a biology.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
It's a construct.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, but she would say it's rooted in our biology. No,
no child has ever come into existence that didn't have
a biological mother and a biological father. It's never happened.
And we're now playing God in ways that are potentially
damaging to the future of kids, and we're not even
we're not really looking at the downsides for children.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
What are the downsides? Did she?

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Well, there aren't. Her problem is there aren't any?

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Really?

Speaker 2 (09:39):
I mean, what's her trick? Her magic trick is that
her chest move. I should say is to say, there's
a lot of historical literature about how bad it is
for kids not to have a stable home with a
nuclear family. So she's talking about, Yeah, she's talking about
kids from broken home. She's talking about kids with step
parents who beat them. She's talking about kids who you know,

(10:00):
lost a pair, and she's talking about and all of
that literature trauma, trauma, trauma. She then smuggles into the
modern day status quo, where, from my perspective, three seconds ago,
we developed the technological and legal ability for people like
me to have kids and raise them in a home
that is free from all of those downsides, no traume,
that is not broken, where there's no trauma, where there

(10:21):
are loving people surrounding the kids, where the kids have
all of the advantages. And there are loads of studies
now that kids in same sex households fair just as
well or better by any metric that you'd want to
than kid And it makes sense because they're brought into
existence by people who really want them. You know that
it's not a sixteen year old couple of sixteen year
olds in the backseat of a car at a drive

(10:42):
in movie theater or something who get knocked up and
then you know, I'm talking about Alabama here, remember, you know,
and then they.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Have to keep the kid.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
You know, obviously kids are going to do well if
their parents really really love them and spent a lot
of money and effort bringing them into existence. But she
makes the move of saying, we can't, you know, we
can't guarantee that the downsides that we normally associate with
children from broken homes don't also apply to these children.
And I mean, it doesn't make a lot of sense,

(11:11):
but I found it.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
What I like about it.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Is that I think in the past ten fifteen years
or so, progressives people on broadly my side of politics.
I think of myself as a pretty left wing guy,
they have taken a very censorious and finger wagging and
whollyer than theur Schoolmarmi attitude to everything. And they've taken
a posture of we don't need to explain to you

(11:38):
why you should be using your putting your pronouns in
your email signature. We don't need to explain to you
why trans women are women. We don't need to explain
to you why you need to sit through a smoking ceremony.
We don't need to explain to you why you need
to be welcomed to your own country at an Anzac
Daidorn service. We don't need to explain to you why,
as a straight white male, you're not allowed to speak

(12:01):
up in a meeting where you feel like people are
being a little bit sexist against men like you. Should
know that we're on the right side of history and
you have to get in line right or we're going
to either hound you on social media, we're going to
report you to HR, We're going to know exclude you
from all from polite society. We're going to potentially get
rid of you from the ABC, which is what it is. Yeah,

(12:24):
and I think that's just fundamentally misguided. If you look
at all the civil rights movements that have been successful,
from civil rights for African Americans in the sixties to
probably the most successful civil rights movement I think of
all time, which is the gay civil rights movement. Between
like the eighties and the twenty tens. The strategy was
not you're a bigot if you don't agree with us.

(12:45):
The strategy was, listen, here's our perspective. We're all on
the same page. We're here, we're queer, we want the
same stuff you do. We want to be able to
open a bank account together and have joint access to it,
to be able to visit our loved ones in the
hospital when they're dying without being treated like a complete stranger.
We want to be able to take out mortgages together.

(13:06):
We want to not be discriminated against when we rent
a house, and ultimately we'd even like to be able
to get married and have that word to endorse our
relationship the same way you do. You don't have to
do anything straight people of the world.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
You don't have to change. Anything.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
We have to do is just live your life and
extend to us the same universal values that you enjoy
for yourselves, you know, equality, and that resonated with people.
People came on board incredibly quickly. I mean when I
was born, being gay was illegal in a number of
states in Australia and the idea of gay marriage was
completely ludicrous.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Right.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
That was a very fast win, and it was a
durable win because we actually won. We didn't I didn't
do anything, but my forefathers in the movement, you know
one hearts and minds. They went on talk shows, they
went on panels, they wrote op eds. Contrast that to
the strategy of what you might call the woke left
of the past five or ten years, where there's no

(13:59):
ex a nation, there's no appeal to fundamental underlying values
that we all share.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
It's just like do.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
As I say, do as I say, And understandably now
in Trump and the far right in Europe and Elon
Musk and like you know, a lot of discontent in
Australia and elsewhere as well. There's a backlash people say,
I don't have to do what you say?

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Or are they saying or are they saying, do as
I say? But what I say is the opposite?

Speaker 3 (14:27):
What do you mean, well, Trump, Musk, the right that's
called it the right is are they saying Are they
saying I don't need.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
To do what you told me to do it?

Speaker 3 (14:37):
Is it a backlash from as a movement or is
it this new movement or the opposite side. Are they saying, no, no, no,
we don't believe in gay rights. We don't believe in
two men be married or too men be married. We
don't believe in your rights relative for you having children
on your own and you should do what I say.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
Well, yes, they are, yes, riches, they are equally censorious
and you know, but this is what you get Mark.
When you have overreach, right, you provoke a backlash, and
when when the whole game is shut the hell up,
because you're not just mistaken, but winnable over if I
speak to you like a grown up and you know,

(15:20):
provide a rational space for us to have a common discussion,
but you'll be on the pale. You're an enemy of civilization,
You're on the wrong side of history. I have to
crush you, and I have to defeat you. Then of
course that provokes the other side. So you see, it's understandable, Josh,
I'm saying it's understandable that you would have a ratcheting
up of intensity and a kind of a cultural war
of attrition where both sides think that it's a I

(15:43):
think that it's a winner take all scenario. So you've
got Donald Trump, who will basically do anything I think
to crush his opponents. But he doesn't come out of
a vacuum. He comes out of a cultural moment in
the United States where a large base of middle Americans,
of small c conservative middle Americans felt like they being
talked down to and well the work and shout upon

(16:03):
yeah by the Hillary Clinton's of the world for too long. Right,
So anyway, this is all a long way of saying
that what I'm doing when I invite someone like this
anti family you know, this pro family values, anti gay
parenting activist on the show, is trying to say these
topics aren't out of bounds. Nothing's out of bounds for
rational conversation. If we're going to survive the twenty first century,

(16:24):
then we're only going to do so by sitting down
in forums like this and exchanging ideas with people we
disagree with as well as those who we agree with,
and too much of our conversations at the moment, coming
back to what you were saying about feeling sort of
besieged and like attacked right on social media. Are we
sit in our silos, in our echo chambers, you know,

(16:47):
inside our kind of thought groups, which algorithms reinforce. They
show us things that are eger like, yeah, we're going
to like even if we hate it, we still like it,
we still engage with it.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
Right.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
It's things that in other words, either reinforce what we
already believe or they demonize things that we don't believe.
But as long as we stay on that video of
the Garsen baby dying and share it or comment on it.
Then that's a win for Silicon Valley. And as a result,
our worldviews get narrower and narrower, and it starts to

(17:19):
feel like it would be beyond the pale to talk
to somebody in good faith who disagrees with us because
they're an enemy. How could you defend the Garsen baby dying,
Like how could you defend a child being ripped away
from its mother or father in the case of gay marriage?
How could you defend you betraying our first nations, brothers
and sisters by questioning an acknowledgment of country. And so

(17:40):
people get more and more like enclosed in these thought chambers.
I see my job as just expanding that by ten percent,
if not punching a hole in the wall altogether, so
that we are all on the same page at least
when we know the sort of the terrain of conversation
that we can have with one another to try to
figure out what's right and wrong and survive as a civilization.

(18:01):
So basically, I'm superman, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
Man, Well, I'm actually I know you're taking the pistative sort,
but to be frank with you, people should listen to
your podcast because unfortunately, or fortunately in your case, fortunately,
the process of navigating your way through what you just
explained so well requires a favoit of intellect and probably
more importantly, an understanding of the topic at an intellectual level,

(18:26):
as opposed to the way most of us look at
these things as we're just looking at as you say,
we're looking at Instagram. We're just getting fedbare social media,
getting fed what we normally it knows we like, and
we're not. Actually, we're too busy, run around business and
we're not really intellectualizing these things.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
That's your job.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
I mean, maybe, look that is that's the reason why
I'm saying that I am clever. But I actually think
there's a muscle that everybody can flex. Everybody listening to
this can flex, regardless of how busy they are and
regardless of how uninformed they might be about a particular issue.
And that muscle is I guess, intellectual empathy a habit,
forming a habit of giving people a benefit of the

(19:01):
doubt and assuming the strongest version of their own case
rather than immediately assuming the worst. So if you see
someone write an article like the one that I did,
or you know, post a clip like the ones that
I might post on social media about something that I'm saying.
We have been trained by the algorithm to take it

(19:21):
in the worst possible faith and to get as to
either agree as wholeheartedly as possible, which is just as
bad as disagreeing as whole heartedly as possible. Like, I've
got some feedback in the past month from people who
think that I'm on their side, which is just as
upsetting to me as the feedback from people who hate me,
because I'm like, I'm just because you're misunderstanding, I'm not

(19:43):
on your bloody team. Don't think I've suddenly jumped ship
and I'm on your team. U g hardiest humas supporting
you know, you know, clueless fool. I'm trying to not
have a team. I'm trying to encourage people to think
about things with the maximum amount of generosity towards ideas
don't come naturally.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Do we need to have a team? No? Is that
the point? That's the point.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
So is tribalism emerging into our communit out of society.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
In other words, pick a team?

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yes, I mean I think it's natural. I think it's
perfectly natural. I think we've always had it right. I mean,
you know, go back to prehistory and we all were tribes,
and so we have a cent and when, especially when
things start feeling uncertain, you hunker into your tribe and
you circle the wagons and you try to protect your kin.
And that's a perfectly natural response, not just for Homo sapiens,

(20:32):
but for all mammals really, right, all clan animals. I
think we did a good job of inventing the Enlightenment
and liberal again, we like I had.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
A partner it.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
People invented the Enlightenment and liberal democracy and institutions like
for everything from the US Constitution to the Declaration for
Human Rights and all kinds of things, so that for
the second half of the twentieth century we understood that
the main objective was to turn the volume down on tribes.
You listen to Martin Luther King speak, you listen to

(21:05):
Gandhi speak, you listen to Nelson Mandela speak.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
I mean Nelson Mandela after he.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Was axed, is imprisoned, and then he got elected. Right,
all of the white supremacist racists who had been in
the previous government said, fine, don'torry, We're not going to
you will let you do your thing. He said, no, no, no,
stay in cabinet.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
I want you with me.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
I want you guys who locked me up to be
working with me, because the only way the country recovers
is by us working together.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
And famously upset his own crowd by wearing a spring
Box jewsey. He's a spring Box game where there was
no not one person of color.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yes, right, exactly, and gurageous. People say it's greageous. Actually,
i'd see really.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Clever, absolutely so smart, smart and brave both. And you know,
you just listened to Obama's speeches from you know, when
he was emerging onto the scene. I believe it 'm
not it's twenty years ago now.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
You know.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
He came onto the scene twenty one years ago when
he first gave us speech at the Democratic National Convention,
which brought his name to people's attention in political circles
in the States, and it was all about how there
is no red America and blue America. There is no
black America and white America. There are only the United
States of America. I get to chill up my spine

(22:18):
even just reciting that. It's so beautiful and in the
intervening twenty years. I think the left has just gone
a bit crazy, and that's caused the right to go
a bit crazy in losing sight of universalism, of this
idea that the tribe actually is a bit of a
dead end. Don't think about tribes. Don't judge people on

(22:41):
the basis of their skin, or their genitals, or their
sexual persuasion. Try as hard as you can to judge
people on the content of their character. Try to have
everyone get along, try to reduce inequality, try to reduce prejudice.
But that almost on the left now comes across as
a passe right wing excuse for inaction, like, oh, do

(23:05):
you think that you know, all of a sudden, it's
just fine for us not to pay any attention to
like we need to have serious conversations about race and
about sex and like my identity. And we have to
change the rainbow flag so it's not a rainbow flag,
but it now represents like First Nations, you know, transgender, indigenous.
Like the whole point of a bloody rainbow is that

(23:25):
it's a rainbow. It's got everything in it, you know,
you don't need to also add in a little black
thing to include likes there's an obsession with tribalism and
identity that I think is occluding our vision and is
just is distracting exactly. It's an ancient instinct, and I
think social media and the instability of the globe is triggering,

(23:46):
is flaring up that tribal instinct. Yes, out of fear
and out of I think a delusional interpretation of the
way the world is. Through social media, you know, people
are presented with an extremified version of things because the
algorithm knows that that's what they're going to spend more

(24:08):
time on. I mean, you know, most people who are
certain one way or another about their position on big, complicated,
controversial issues that we all deep down know there isn't
an easy answer to. I'm talking about all of these subjects,
right Gaza, international relations, you know, whether to bomb Iran,

(24:30):
race relations, same sex marriage, whatever it might be.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Religion.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Anyone who has a strident opinion about those things was
either raised in a you know, a blinkered, blinded, constrained
environment and has never been able to escape that prejudice,
as is often the case with highly religious people, or
they're consuming a view of the world from social media

(24:57):
that is just sending them down a rabbit hole and
is constantly reinforcing that worldview and has deranged them. I mean,
you look at the social media feed of someone who
thinks that Israel is blameless, and you look at the
social media fair feed of someone who thinks that Israel
is committed to committing a genocide against the Palestinians, and
you're looking at two different worlds.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Let's talk about that. Tribes Israel.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
You're Jewish, Yeah, you're part of I mean you would
you consider yourself as part of the Jewish community?

Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah, okay, you feel strongly.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
About perhaps the Holocaust. Yep, you've written an article recently
about your grandmother. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
What was the article titled?

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Well, the part of the problem is that the journalist
doesn't write the title. The sub editor writes the title.
And people should know that too, and people should be
aware of that, because I think that's a large part
of the misunderstanding about what I was trying to say.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
But it was called just in case you want to
look it up.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Just go I actually don't remember, but it was just
if you google Zepp's SVDPS Israel, I'll tell him. It
was something like my grandmother survived the Holocaust and now.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah, I'm going to tell me exactly what it is.
My grandmother fled the Holocaust. Now it's time for Jews
to abandon Israel. Now that's that's written by Josh, but
he didn't put up the title. And that title is
usually the case is the Cidney Morning held and the age.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
And the age. So the Fairfax Group published it.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Usually it's the someone internally who writes there better writes
that it.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Usually this paper writes the headline.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
It's usually a drag and they want to make it
they're dragging the audience. Yeah, exact, and that's fine and
it worked and it worked. So just to give people
some background, my dad was born in a refugee camp
in nineteen forty three in Switzerland to Jewish parents who'd
fled Poland just before Hitler invaded Poland. There all the

(26:48):
rest of his family and his parents family were wiped
out in concentration camps, and he was raised by foster
staunched Lutheran foster family in the Swiss Alps for the
first two years of the war, and then when he
was eight, after living in Paris with his mum and
her new boyfriend, they came out to Australia on a
boat as refugees. So that's the like sort of backstory.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
To my history.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
I mean, I'm not a religious person, I don't, you know,
I go to synagogue and I don't feel I'm not
raising my kids Jewish. But you know, you're part of
a clan, You're part of a tribe. I relate to
my Jewishness a bit like I will relate to my Gainers.
I sort of think it's just the thing that's in
the back that's a part of the backdrop tapestry of
who I am. And I'm sort of proud of it,

(27:31):
and I'm also sort of annoyed by it, you know,
in differing measure and.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
But you're already be defined by it.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
I don't want to be defined by it exactly. And
I'm certainly not going to carry water or Jewish that's right,
that's right. I'll be defined by the things I do, yep, right, well,
as you said earlier on, by your character exactly, yes,
by my choices. I'm not you know, this is why
I also have made enemies by like I wrote also
a piece you know, not too long ago, against gay

(28:00):
pride or just asking.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
For people to the same newspaper too, the same newspaper. Yeah,
you know, like do we need to be proud at
this stage? Like what are we being proud of? Exactly?

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Like I understand we needed to be we needed to
pretend to be proud when.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Everyone thought it should be more proud than anyone else.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Exactly, that's right, just but also what are we being
proud of? Like I'm not proud that I'm six foot,
I'm not proud of being white. If I was proud
of being white, we would immediately understand that that's a problem. Yeah, right,
I mean, you shouldn't be proud of being but you're
not embarrassed. You weren't though at the same time, I'm
not embarrassed and I'm white. But I also think it's
silly to be proud of being black or Asian or
gay or like what like be proud of the things

(28:36):
you do.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Who gives it what?

Speaker 2 (28:41):
So that was my basic point. And then but you're
not part of the Israel trip, part of Jewish. I
am part of it, you know, I am, whether I
want to be or not, a guy who will be
labeled as gay and a guy who will be labeled
as a jew. Right, I'd be Jewish enough to be
shoveled into a constant tration camp. You know, I'd be

(29:01):
Jewish enough for you know, for Hitler. He's not going
to be you know, he's not quibbling whether whether I
believe I'm history. Yeah, I'd be straight in, straight into
the straight into the gas shads. So you know, there's that,
And then what's happened is that I've had this sort
of conflicted relationship, like a lot of Jewish Nians do.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
I think, with the state of Israel. Here's a country
that the politics of Israel as as opposed.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
To exactly not This is a very important distinction, not
with israelis and not with the existence of a country
that is called Israel, but with the expectation that a
lot of people in the Jewish community have that we
have to only have conversations internally about our problems with Israel,
and we shouldn't that It's sort of again that the

(29:45):
kind of the wagons, you know, surrounding the caravan, and
like the hunkering down and the tribalism, like we shouldn't
air our dirty laundry about Israel to the rest of society,
to non Jewish people, because that will only give ammunition
to you know, anti Semitism or something. And I've been
newly on that since October seventh, since the barbaric attacks
by the hardest death cult who can select?

Speaker 3 (30:08):
What do you think about that, Josh so so, just
talk about October seventh, Yeah, just as a preface right.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
Now, Well, it was.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
More more horrifying than the savagery of people storming across
a border and like raping innocent young partygoers at a
music festival who are high on ecstasy, a lot of them,
which is what was happening on that date. What's happening
on that day?

Speaker 3 (30:45):
It has But you're saying it had great ramifications, that
there was greater intent behind it, Well.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
There was a lot.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah, No, I mean, I think it was just just
to remind people. Right, You've got over a thousand people,
you know, innocent people and a pretty hippie, dippy part
of the country who were left part it was a
left wing part of the country. Therefore they're you know,
they're mostly peace nicks and they're mostly it's a love
rave right in a field, and these people are being

(31:13):
raped with rifle butts and you know, having their internal organs,
you know, smeared everywhere, and you know, just the most
and with glee, like these people are don't with glee, right,
It's not like this is a regrettable casualty that we
have together, we have to do in order to achieve
something on our way to attack a military installation or something.
They're not going for any military installations. Wanted to kill

(31:34):
lots of Jews. It was a pogrom. But what was
more disturbing to me than that was that immediately instantly
protests all over the world in support of the Palestinians
who had elected this jihadist death cult Hamas, which had

(32:00):
then carried out this attack before Israel had done anything.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
Right, we actually went down here with your prowse. Yeah,
literally days after it, Yeah, with people yelling where are
the Jews?

Speaker 2 (32:10):
And then there was some misinformation that they had said
gas the Jews. And then you know, I got into
a few arguments online with friends of mine, like Antoinette Leatwof,
who was saying like, no, no, no, it wasn't gas
the Jews, it was where of the Jews?

Speaker 1 (32:22):
And I was like, excuse me for not being.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Hugely reassured by that distinction. Why are there a bunch
of Arab Muslims, you know, rallying, screaming.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Where are the Jews? Do they have good.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Intentions for me? It's not a consolation that they're not.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
Like.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
This is what I'm sort of objecting to and why
I wanted to write the piece. I don't want the
whole world, including Australia, to become tribalized into identity groups
who feel like they have to carry water for either
jihadists or the Netta Yahu government. That's not my fight,
that's not our fight, that's not the fight of That

(32:57):
shouldn't be the fight of Arab Australians. That shouldn't be
the fight of Muslim Australians. Certainly shouldn't be the fight
of foggy headed, lefty, well meaning white Australians on Instagram
who have no connection to the region but see images
of devastation on their iPhones and think that it's now
their calling to bang on constantly and become elatant, yeah

(33:18):
about how terrible Zionists are and use the terms Ionists
in ways that smell to most Jews like anti semitic,
you know, like slander. So the point of the article
was basically saying we have to find a way to
talk about our Jewishness, the Jewish community, where we're not
always carrying water for Israel. So when I said when
I write, I probably if I write it again, Honestly, Mark,

(33:40):
I wouldn't write that. I wouldn't write it's time for
Jews who abandon Israel. But as you know, when you're writing,
you've got these two competing needs. When you're writing, one
is to be highly delicate and nuanced and explanatory and
hedging everything you say so you can't possibly be misunders stood,

(34:00):
and right in a very academic way.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
You annoyed with yourself. You're doing that.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, and people it's boring. Nobody wants to read a thesis.
The other need you have is to have people fall
off their seat and go bloody hell. That punched me
in the gut. I felt that, you know, I really
felt that the audience, and so you know, I spend
the whole art I spend eleven hundred and fifty words
talking about what misguided hypocrites. I think that the anti

(34:29):
Zionist movement is how they don't understand the history of
that region, theyn't understand why there's a settlement. They don't
understand why, I mean the settlements in the West Bank.
They understand why there's an occupation. Most of them don't
know about the Oslo Accords. They don't know about Yitzak Rabin.
They don't know what happened in nineteen sixty seven. They
don't know who invaded the West Bank. When Israel was created,
it wasn't Israel, it was Jordan. They don't know who

(34:50):
invaded Gaza when Israel was created. It wasn't Israel, it
was Egypt. They don't understand why Israel is sitting on
this land at all, because it was invaded by all
of its Arab neighbor who wanted to either kill all
the Jews or drive them out of the region. And
then it won a military victory, which ordinarily means you
get to keep the land.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
You don't just give it back that you know, you
don't get the deal. That's the deal. You don't get
to keep invading.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
They invaded in forty eight, the Arab States in sixty seven,
in seventy three, and every time they want they want
to go, you know, okay, we're going to wipe out
all the Israelis and we're going to take back all
the land for the Arabs, and then when we lose, oh,
let's just go back to the starting place. No, I'm sorry,
that's not how wars work. You don't get to just
keep declaring war against the people and then just say

(35:32):
can we have a do over? So, you know, there
was a huge history, and then you don't have to
go to the nineteen nineties and the fact that the
Nobel Peace Prize went to Yitzak Rabin and Shimon Perez
and the Palestine leader for you know, really agreeing to
a two state solution. Then the Israeli PM gets.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
Assassinated, but the Israelis continue.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
To try to figure out a way to divest themselves
of these territories which they're occupying, which was supposed to
be the Palestine land. And what happens then, you know,
so they have Camp David in the year two thousand
and Clinton gets together with Barak and the Palastinian leader
of Bus and they make another offer, and the Palestinians

(36:15):
walk away, and they launch what's acutely called the Second
Intofada in the year two thousand, which really ramps up
in the northern summer of two thousand and one. You
see posters. Now that's say globalize the Intervada. Have you
seen that on stickers and posters and stuff, people say,
globalize the Innovada, meaning the Palsenian cause is our cause,
you know, the Palasian cause is the Indigenousustralian cause. You know,

(36:37):
it's about work, it's about fighting back against the white
colonialist you know, structural patriarchy and global capitalist hegemony of
like the military complex. Yeah, the colonizers. So the world
is like bifurcated into these two very simple camps. You're
either a colonizer zionist, you know, militarist, pro us imperialist
white or you're an innocent, blameless person of color, colonized victim.

(37:04):
It's victim or victimizer. It's colonized or colonizer. That's that's
like this simplistic binary that you're supposed to accept about
the world.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
The fact that the.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
Arab States have been pushing Islam at the end of
a sword for centuries across the Middle East. The fact
that the Jews had the Kingdom of King David thousands
of years ago. The fact that when you dig up Israel,
it's all Jewish archaeological stuff. The fact that if anyone
was doing a welcome to country in the Middle East,

(37:35):
in Israel, it will be the Jews doing the welcome
to country in Israel. This is all sort of glossed
over because of the atrocities that are being perpetrated by
Israeli right now. Right now, people see that, they see
a snapshot, and just as if you'd seen a snapshot
of Hiroshima or the fire bombing of Dresden on your

(37:57):
phone every single day. I mean, who would you think
was the good guy in World War Two if every
single day the Nazi, Yeah, the Nazis were feeding you
all of the information about how horrible it was to
live in Dresden. I mean, how would you continue to
support that sort of a campaign. So there's this lack

(38:21):
of historical Well, the second in fart just to stop
on the point of Intafada, because you know a lot
of people don't know this. First of June two thousand
and one, vast majority of Israelis are behind the peace process,
which has now been dragging on for seven eight nine,
about ten years of trying to figure out a way
to give the West Bank and Gaza back to the

(38:42):
Palestinians and create a state and the major stumbling block
is the question of the right of return of Palestinians.
Right the UN when they set up you remember, end
of the Second World War, countries are being created all
over the Joint Refugees are all over the place. My
grandparents are kicked out of you know, Poland, kicked out
of Europe. They come set up here, huge flows of people.

(39:02):
The Jews are being kicked out of all the Arab
countries in the Middle East, and they're going to Israel
because they're hoping that the country's going to be created,
and it gets created, and there's a bit for Israel,
and then to the east of that there's the West
Bank and Gaza for the Arab population. They weren't called
Palestinians yet they invented that nationality after you know, they

(39:23):
were dispossessed from the land, and that was where the
Arabs go. And then about a fifth of the population
of Israel proper remain Arabs. They are Arab Israeli citizens, right.
They enjoy equal rights to the rest of They're probably
the best treated Arabs in the world.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
There's Arabs living in this the Arabs living in Israel.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
You know, if I gave you, if I suddenly click
my fingers and said, all right, you're now an Arab
and you don't know whether you're going to be rich
or part of a royal family. You're just going to
be an average citizen, right, You're just going to spin
a You're going to roll the dice, and you could
be anywhere in society at any level. You could either
be poor or rich or whatever based on status.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
Whatever.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
You get to choose to be anywhere in the Middle
East as the place. I mean, you're not going to
choose You're not going to go to an Arab state.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
Yeah, of course most and that by the ways of
most people. Most people don't realize that Israel treats the
Arabes who live there. Well, absolutely, I want to reframe it.
It's not like they're treading will just there's no treing well,
no turing bad.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
There's three citizens in a liberal democracy that's rich and
in avery. So what do you do about the Arabs
that are surrounding the place, Well, the instant Israel gets created.
Instead of allowing the Arabs to form their own state,
Jordan invades the West Bank and guyes We'll take that.
And by the sixties what is now the West Bank
is like a third of Jordan's economy and population. It's

(40:40):
like a big thriving part of Jordan, and Egypt is
sitting on the Gaza strip. So the reason why initially
why there was no Palestine was because the Arab states
didn't want there to be, because they wanted to keep
the land for themselves. Then they got a bit greedy
and tried to take over Israel completely in nineteen sixty seven,
and unfortunately for them, Israel won back those territories and

(41:03):
then was like, well, what do we do with them now?
And everyone in Israel basically thought we're going to have
to help them create a Palastinian state at some point.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
The problem was every time they.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Tried to broach the topic of creating a Palastinian state,
every single Palestinian leader, including up until today, found it
impossible to say that they don't have a right to
go back to Tel Aviv and the original places where
some of them came from. Some of them were born

(41:33):
and raised in the West Bank, some of them born
and raised in Gaza, but many of them can trace
their ancestry back to what is now Israel proper, and
as far as Israel's concerned that's not a fair deal.
Nineteen forty eight was a weird time. It was a
long time ago.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
So yeah, a lot of Palatinians are hanging around with
like a key or on.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
It's a thing in Palestine to have a key hanging
on a necklace around your neck to the house that
you're great great grandparents came from in what is now
some Israeli town saying like someday, someday I'll be able
to return, and my romantic it's very romantic, and it's
really sad, and my heart goes out to the Palastinian people.

(42:15):
I mean, I am as devastated as anybody about how
badly they've been screwed. I just disagree with the mainstream
Palastinian narrative that the main cause of their being screwed
is Jews. The main cause of their being screwed is
the fact is the dysfunctional way that the Arab world
has continued to inflame the Palestinian right of return, that

(42:36):
someday we will go back to the sea, the Jews
won't be here anymore. This kind of a lot of
Arab autocrats and the Arab street and the jihadists and
the Iranian Theocrats have a vested interest in promoting in
whipping up this kind of anti Semitic.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
It's good.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Well, it bonds them together, it gives them a common enemy,
and it absolves them of the responsibility to do anything
for the Palatinians. Right, they don't have to allow Katar
just hosted the World Cup, right a couple of years ago.
Who build all the stadiums. They shipped in people from
Bangladesh to build the stadiums. Why don't they let Palestinians
come and build the stadiums and send some money back home?

(43:15):
Do you want to Why do you think that because
they don't like I mean sad truth is, the Arab
golf states don't like the Palestinians. They think they're gey hardists.
They think they're trouble, they think they're lazy, they think
they're dysfunctional, and they don't see a future in them.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
They see a.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
Future in oil money, tourism, opening up to the world,
and ideally eventually being on the same side as Israel
in the United States. They want to back winners, they
want to back the stronghorse. The problem is the Hour
of Street can't contemplate that. So the Arab leaders who
are playing a double game, right the Arab leaders in
the Golf States and in Saudi Arabia. Their attitude is

(43:53):
keep talking a big game about how much we care
about Palaestinians, but don't give them the ability. Don't give
them any work visas to come and work here and
send money back to their families in Gaza or the
West Bank. Don't allow them to get citizenship or permanent
residency in places like Lebanon, where tons of these refugees
currently live, and they're stateless. They can't even travel Mark.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
You know.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
I've I've met people in Lebanon who asked them what
nationality they are, and they say Palestinian. They have a
Palestinian ID card, but they're not Lebanese. They don't have
a passport, and as far as they're concerned, they say
they're Palestinian. They've never been to the town that their

(44:34):
great great grandparents came from. Their parents have never been there,
their grandparents have never been there, and sometimes their great
grandparents have never been there. But their home, deep in
their heart, is still this town in what is now
Israel proper. And they've been sold a lie by Arab
leaders and by international aid organizations and by well meaning

(44:55):
lefties around the world for sixty years that someday they
will be able to return. And so the pickle that
Israel has found itself in which it was trying to
address is like we get this bit of land, you
get that bit of land. We don't get to come
and live in the West Bank or like Gaza, if
you don't get to come and live on in Israel,

(45:17):
like it's supposed to be two countries. And the inability
to find a way to divest itself of the West
Bank and Gaza has now led to Israel into what
I think is this moral abyss, where it is running
a military occupation in the West Bank, humiliating and degrading Palastinians.
It continues to build settlements meaning towns, you know, just

(45:39):
constructs Jewish towns on what is supposed to be Palatinian land,
which is hardly a show of good faith that you're
actually serious about a two state solution. And now it
has taken the most brutal and militaristic approach to addressing
the problem of having jihadists, you know, of having essentially
terrorists running the Enclaven Gaza, where there seems to be

(46:03):
no care for human life whatsoever or no proportionality.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Now it seems that or you think that is the case.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Well, look, I understand how tricky it is to talk
about because as far as the Israelis are concerned, Look,
israelis Rozrael Israel, as far as Israel is concerned. But
I would have to say that now they are almost indistinguishable.
I mean, I would say that ninety percent of the
Israeli population is on board with the view I'm about

(46:31):
to articulate, even if they don't agree with the Netanyahu government.
They would say there used to be Israeli towns in Gaza,
there used to be settlements, and we withdrew in two
thousand and five and there was no blockade there. Israel
was not stuff and around with Gaza at all. There
was a full unilateral withdrawal. They ripped out. The army

(46:53):
went in and ripped out, screaming Jews from Gaza, in
order to say, you know what we're done, have it,
take it, do what you want with it, guys, We're
over having a military occupation. And that was a test
case for the West Bank. There are a lot of
people in the Israeli government at the time in two
thousand and four to two thousand and five, who thought,
the way we're going to do this is to withdraw

(47:14):
from Gaza, and as long as that works, we'll just
unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank and we won't keep
waiting for them to accept our right to exist.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
They're never going to do it. They're never going to
come around.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Just build a big wall, leave side by side. The
problem was the Prime Minister of Israel had a stroke
and wasn't able to completely fulfill that. And the other
problem was it was after nine to eleven George W.
Bush and Connolly's a Ris the Secretary of State, and
the United States were big on empowering the Arab world
to be more democratic. They wanted to shake up of
the Arab world. They thought the problem was too many

(47:47):
Arab dictators, and so they were like, let's empower the
Ghazan people by giving them a vote for who they
want to rule them. And the Israelis were like, don't
do that. They're going to just vote in a bunch
of usholes who want to kill everybody. And they were
persuaded otherwise by the international community and by the US.
You know, let's create a democratic Gaza. Well, the Gazans

(48:09):
have voted for terrorists. They voted for Hummus Humas. And
once you've got this fully, I mean, I don't want
to mince words here. People should not understand Hummas as
anything other than an incredibly ragingly jew hating, murderous, genocidal
death cult. I mean, this is not a you know,

(48:30):
some people sort of think, well, it's you know, it's
a it's sort of like Nelson Mandela or something like,
it's a liberation struggle.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Yes, it's that.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
It's not the plo I mean it is of course,
of course, it is fueled by the frustrations of a
people who yearn for freedom. But their freedom has not
been deprived by Israel over the past since two thousand
and five, their freedom has been deprived by the terrorists
who are holding them hostage and by the Arab states,
especially Qatar, who empower that. And I'll add by the

(49:00):
cynicism of the Netanyahu government in facilitating that, because it
sort of suited Israel's right wing government to have Hummus
in power in Gaza, because it was a It meant
it gave them an excuse to not pursue peace. Right
they were like, well, we're not going to go negotiate elections, yeah,
because we're war.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
No election.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah yeah, well, I mean of course they're not going
to have elect I mean, hummus would never allow elections.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
Anym But also in Israel, so I see what sort
of securities position.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah, yeah, well exactly.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
I mean he'll have the elections that he's required constitutionally
to have, but he doesn't have to. Yeah, he can
call them at the time of his choosing, and it's
when it suits him the best. So this is a
long rambling way of saying that once you've got the
death cult in charge, then Israel imposes a blockade because
you can't have people who are obviously committed to I mean,

(49:48):
they start getting money, right, Gaza starts getting money from
the international community, and what does its government do with it.
It doesn't build. It could have built Singapore with the
amount of money it's gotten, could have built high rises,
could have made itself a technology hub, could have dinailing
with it. It builds the largest tunnel network in the
world that it doesn't allow civilians into. It only allows

(50:09):
its military into, and then uses its civilians as human
shields and pawns. So again, this is a long round
about way of saying they've rigged the game the Palestinian
government in Gaza, such that anything that Israel does to
get rid of them is going to make Israel essentially
guilty of genocide in the eyes of the world. Like

(50:29):
if your own government is committed to killing as many
innocent people as possible in order to stay in power,
then you're basically booby trapped the system such that your
adversary has to do horrendous things in order to get
you out of power. And the tragedy is that Israel
is doing those things. Like I don't know whether or

(50:50):
not you can classify it as war crimes or genocide
or whatever. To me, there's a legalistic way that you
can say that Israel is guilty of genocide by that yardstick.
Hiroshimu was genocide. Lots of things that the West has done.
Vietnam was genocide that were you know, because like genocide
technically under international law, I think is just the the
whole or partial like prevention of a people from being

(51:16):
able to exist as a people. So if you think
of the Gardens as a people, you'd have to say
that that's the case, right, Their lives are being rendered
intolerable to live as Garzens. But if, as many Israelis
see it, you see the gardens as a shat upon
rump of the wider Arab world, and there are half

(51:37):
a billion Arabs living in the Middle East and just
a few million Jews, then it's obviously.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
Not a genocide.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Like I spoke to one Israeli member of parliament, former
member of parliament on my show, and she was like,
you know when it'll be like a genocide when there
are half a billion Jews and only a few million Arabs.
Like the population of Arabs and the population gardens, of
the population of the West Bank of Palestinians in general
is continuing to grow and grow and grow. And I
think when people, when the lay person hears the word genocide,

(52:05):
what they think it means, and what I think it
morally means is the intentional attempt to wipe out an
ethnic group, to wipe it out. And I don't think
that's what Israel is doing. But I also don't think
that as a Jewish Australian I should be expected to
keep making excuses for a state that I think has
become deranged by its own predicament as in Israel.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
Yeah, and well, can I just go back on the garden,
the Garden Hamas differentiation? How do you reconcile that this
is part of the narrative? But innocent gardens innocent let's
call Palestinians who have nothing to do with Hamas but
nothing to do with the ruling party are being killed

(52:49):
whilst Israel is trying to get rid of Hamas as
the reigning sort of group in the organ within Israel. Man,
how do we reckon sold that?

Speaker 1 (53:00):
Now?

Speaker 3 (53:01):
You know, like I get the fact that Israel wants
to get rid of mus I get it because, as
you said, it seems to be the terrorist organization and
they're intent on one thing, one thing alone, that's wiping
out Israel or wiping out Jews generally, and israel I
guess too.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
But at the same time, there's Palace.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
There are Gars, people living Gaza who've got nothing to
do with any of that. At what point do we
say that Israel's gone too far?

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (53:26):
I mean that's the question, isn't it. That is the question.
I don't know the answer to that. But you know,
you start wars, you know, play stupid games, win stupid
prizes mark the start a war, then your people die.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
But but you do see the unfairness because a lot
of people in Palestine were a lot of Gazans at
the time, willn't even know that October seventh is going
to happen, that they weren't warned.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
No, that's I mean, that's what I'm so sympathetic to many.
I mean, I'm conflicted in two ways. Right on the
one hand, I think they that gardens are basically hostages,
hostages to a had used death cult, Hostages to the
cynicism of Arab autocrats, hostages to the whole notion of
jihadism as it's sort of perpetrated by the same kinds

(54:10):
of forces that gave rise to ISIS And a lot
of this is linked back to Iran and the theocracy there,
and hostages of international The international community have always found
Israel a bit unseemly in a way that they single
it out for like the Unitedations has more resolutions against
Israel than any other country in the world, I think

(54:30):
than the next you know, ten or something combined, Like
do we actually believe that it's actually more worthy of censure.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Than North Korea? In Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
I mean, come on, what's going on is yeah, and
you know, nothing it's done is even remotely approaches the
atrocities of the next you know, worst fifty countries you
know who don't who aren't censored. So israelis smell a rat.
On the question of like, how many dead babies? Is
too many dead babies? I kind of think it's the

(55:00):
wrong framing in the sense that I think that implicit
in the question about this, at least for me in
the early stages of the war, is a belief that
the Palestinian people, through their views, their community, their elected representatives,
their arguments on the global stage, were deeply, deeply wronged

(55:25):
by Israel, only wanted peace with Israel and were predictably
going to do something outrageous in order to break out
of the sort of open air prison that Gaza had become.
And if you start from that starting point, then I

(55:46):
would sort of say that almost no civilian casualty is
worth the price. At the time, I was arguing that
Israel should have done something like moved the entire population
of women and children into the southern part of Israel,
or maybe into the Sinai where Egypt is and create
a huge humanitarian zone where they could be well treated.

(56:07):
And then any military age male who remains in Gaza
either let them either vet them and let them out. Yeah,
and forget about the hostage hostages.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
They're done.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Sorry, you know you're not going to you know, this
is the last time we bend over backwards and reward
you for taking our hostages.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
This is it.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
It ends here, and just flood the tunnels or something,
you know, just like go full there. There are strategies
you can imagine that would have avoided the amount of ongoing,
constant carnage that I think has been reputationally terrible and
morally abysmal. But if you flip the script and you
see Palatinians not as innocent, Like, here's an interesting thing.

(56:49):
Mark tim Mitchell said this to me actually on my show.
Notice who we give sympathy to, and notice who we
give agency to, and it'll tell you a lot about
our own prejudices and biases.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
That's interesting. Notice who we.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Give sympathy to, and notice who we give agency to,
because we often overdo it. If there's a brown, poor
person standing amid rubble, we give them all the sympathy
and none of the agency. And if there's a white
guy in a fancy suit, speaking perfect English, who is

(57:26):
educated in an American university and who's in charge of
a lot of expensive bombs, we give them all the
agency and zero sympathy. And that's a fudge. Yes, the
Palestinian child, it does not deserve to be in the
situation they are in, so we can see. But their

(57:48):
uncles and their grandparents have been complicit, or at least
been manipulated by people who are complicit in a refusal
to accept that any Jews have a right to a
country in the Middle East, a country that was established
under international law at a time when it was perfectly

(58:09):
legitimate for them to live in the boundaries that where
they were. And we've split ourselves into these two kind
of narratives where imagine, like just to sort of try
to amp up our sympathy for the people who most
Australians regard as being the villains in this which is
the Israelis, Imagine you bend over backwards in the nineties

(58:32):
with a large majority of your population really wanting a
Palacitian state, which they did, and the response you get
is what's called the Second Intofada, which is. I think
it was fifteen hundred drive by shootings in the space
of a single year. So every other day you've got
a bomb or a drive by shooting in your country

(58:55):
at a time when you thought that you were on
track for a peace process, you know, on the June
the first in two thousand and one, the first bomb
was at this nightclub on the beach, which was mostly
high school students.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
That's the other thing.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
They were mostly targeting kids because they knew that would
be the pressure point, the pain point. So imagine you're
a parent who you know with fifteen or sixteen year
old kids and they're out in Fitzroy and Melbourne, or
in Newtown in Sydney, or in Fremantle in Perth and
the pub that they're in it has a bally bombing
style bomb and that happens two days later, and that

(59:29):
happens two days after that. How many weeks or months
of that do you need before you go, hang on,
why are we doing the peace thing? What do they want?
What is this all about? I thought we were talking
to each other about. Oh, they don't want peace at all.

(59:52):
They're timing these bombings to coincide with the peace talks.
Because they want the whole Enchilada, And that's popular position
in Palestine, It's a very popular position in the Arab world,
and it's an increasingly popular proposition in Australia and the
West that Israel is a shitty little country that shouldn't
exist at all. Basically, it's kind of a colonial project

(01:00:15):
and it was the Palestinians land all along.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
So if you're in Israeli, like, can we understand.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Why they would elect a shitty little government like Netta
Yahoo's And you know, they even went back to the
drawing board after the second into Farda, and they tried
in two thousand and eight. There was the biggest, most
generous software that Omett put on the table, and the
Palaestinians wouldn't take it because it didn't involve Palestinians moving
en mass back into Israel and swamping the Jewish population

(01:00:46):
because their great great great grandparents lived there. Like do
the Jews get the right of the right of return
if they left Iraq in the forties? Do the Jews
get a right of return to Syria? Do the Jews
get a right of return to Poland? The only people
who get a right of return back to the places
where their ancestors were displaced from. In this Palastinian worldview,
the Palacinians in the West Bank and Gaza who get
to demolish Israel basically demographically by coming in in their

(01:01:09):
millions and millions and millions. What country in the world
would tolerate that kind of refugee resettlement. What the Israelis want,
understandably is their country and a Palastinian country. Now, I
am super critical of Israel for being disingenuous about pursuing that,
for having been conflicted about it, for maintaining a brutalizing
military occupation in the West Bank, for continuing to build

(01:01:30):
towns in the West Bank that make it seem like
they're not really committed to a two state solution, for
the brutality of the blockade on Gaza, which was understandable
because a death cult was in charge, And for the
way they prosecate prosecuting the war. And the point of
my article was to say, we as a Jewish community
have to be free from bullshit and brave in saying

(01:01:50):
this state is not our state, it's not my state,
it's not the state that my grandmother envisioned, it's not
a state that's living up to the aspirations of what
it means to be Jewish. To me, it's a state
that has fallen into paranoia, bitterness and dehumanization. But it
is a state that has a right to exist, and
it is a state that is in a part of
the world that persistently refuses to accept that right. And

(01:02:14):
it is a state that is dealing with neighbors who
it is occupying, who have persistently, with one voice, insisted
that they have a right to come back to where
their great great grandparents were born, a right that nobody
else in the world gets. And so it's a bit
bloody rich I feel for us to be dividing up

(01:02:37):
our own society, for Jewish Australian parents to be worried
about their children waiting at the bus stop because they
could be identified as going to a Jewish school, for
my dad's nursing home, to have put up big new
security fences and bollards, or really, in the past twelve months,
because some deranged jihadist might drive a truck bomb into

(01:02:59):
a bunch of old Holocaust survivors. You say that's paranoia
or you don't. No, I think that's legitimate legitimate. I
think there is legitimate concern. I like that this is
how toxic it has become. And I'm proud that I'm
a member of a community where I can speak out
and write a piece like I did saying this Israel
doesn't speak for me. Where are the pieces by the

(01:03:20):
Arab Muslim Australians saying that the Palestinian cause doesn't that
that doesn't speak for them, but Hummas doesn't speak for them,
that the idea of eradicate Israel.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Why do you think?

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Do you think equally because of the tribalism factor that
we were talking about before, and.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
I strongly tribal then say that, yes, yes.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
I do.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
I think so.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Yeah, I think I think Muslims as a rule, and
I'll get a lot of shit for saying this. I
think that the Muslim community, as a rule, it tends
towards more conservatism, and tends towards closing ranks, and has
been too apologetic for dysfunctional systems of government and for
jihadism and for Islamism. Over the past twenty or thirty years,

(01:03:58):
you know, there's been a kind of like, well, it's
not our problem's got nothing to do with us. Well,
you know, major Muslim institutions from Saudi Arabia have been
spreading their version of salaphust Islam right throughout the world,
across the you know, this kind of Wahabi extremism, or
even across places like Indonesia. And I would like it
if members of the community were more willing and more

(01:04:21):
open to say like, no, no, no, no no. The
things that are getting preached in lakember Mosque about you know,
white people and Jews being pigs and Americans being imperialists Nazis,
that's not that's ridiculous. And so I'm just trying to
do my bit by saying, like, we have to find
a way of talking about our ethnic communities in the
diasprain places like Australia that does not hit us to

(01:04:42):
the wagon of other countries or other agendas overseas. Do
not import that kind of toxicity here, you know, like
this is our country. Let's all get along with it
and don't expect the Jewish community to endure, know, pain,
discrimination and very real threats of violence, I mean very

(01:05:06):
real threats of anti Semitic jew hating violence which people
delusionally think is directed against Zionism, colonialism, imperialist aggression, but
is really sort of an the latest incarnation of an
ancient distaste.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
For the jew Did you think that's because one side,
let's call it the Jewish side, much more distant through
generations away from Israel, and the other side is not
not as distant. In other words, they might have a
parent here who's just come in from one of those
countries that are anti Israel. Do you think there's somebody

(01:05:47):
just to do with the sequence of time?

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Interesting? Could be?

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
Could be also, I think, I mean the Israel thing
is like the Jewish community, it's the oldest enduring ethnicity
in the West five thousand years. Not from a physical no,
I understand what we're saying. But the point that I'm
making is Israel's existed for eighty years, less than eighty years, right,

(01:06:12):
So no Israel existed in forty eight or in sixty seven.
They took over Palestine right when they were invaded. So
the Jews have had ninety eight point something percent of
their history with no Israel. I mean, there was the
ancient kingdom and all list of stuff like in prehistory,
but I mean Jews are very familiar with not carrying

(01:06:34):
water for Israel. Because it didn't exist for ninety eight
percent of Jewish history. But I don't think that Muslims
and Arabs have learned the skill of distancing themselves from
the ideas of Arab nationalism and Muslim liberation that emerged

(01:06:56):
in the twentieth century, Like these are reasonably recent things
like this kind of extremists. You know, you go back
a couple of centuries and Muslims weren't extremists. There's nothing
intrinsic to Islam that is extreme. But I think partly
as a result of oil and partly as a result
of colonialism and whatever you want to attribute it to,
there is a major dysfunction. Anyone who denies that there

(01:07:18):
is a major dysfunction in the way that the Arab
Muslim world articulates its sense of self is kidding themselves.
I mean, this is the other thing about a Palestinian state.
What Arab Muslim state are we thinking this Palasinian state
will look like? That's going to be so great for Palatinians?

(01:07:40):
Most anti Zionists can't answer that question for me. Point
me to this great, well functioning state that says as
rich and liberal and democratic as Israel, that's great for gays.
That's great for women. Where is this place? And so
we're going to create one more failed Arab Muslim state
which is probably going to become a proxy for Iran,
would almost certainly just become a place where for Iranian

(01:08:04):
meddling the way the south of Lebanon is, it would
become Asbola and much stronghold. So yeah, they deserve a state, absolutely,
but let's not be dewy eyed about how magnificent everything
would be if only Israel would get the hell you know.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
But what's your solution is, Josh? I mean, I'm not
suggesting you have the solution, but I'm glad you asked
because they have a point plan. No I don't. But
where does it all end up?

Speaker 3 (01:08:28):
I mean for Australians are talking about not not not there? Right, yeah,
because we are talking about here. So where what do
we do? Is that politicians need to intervene? What what
I mean? I know you have you intervened, but.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Well, yes, I've intervened. Liked I would have liked to
see stronger remarks about anti semitism earlier after October seventh,
just to make it crystal clear from the Urban Easy government.
You'll notice something interesting when we like when we talk

(01:09:02):
about the about other forms of bigotry or prejudice or violence,
we don't feel the need to add on a whole
bunch of other forms of hate. But when people talk
about anti Semitism, they never put a full stop after it.
When people say, like remember the nurses who were who

(01:09:22):
got into trouble for being on that zoom or where
they were. You know, they were talking about how for
Jew came in. They were in Israel, in Sydney and
they were talking to in Israeli. Yeah, they're doing Israeli
journeys social media guy. Yeah, so you know if a
Jew came in, we wouldn't treat him. In fact, you know,
Jews have come in and we've sent them to hell.
So right after that, a parade of politicians at a

(01:09:46):
state and federal level came out and said there is
absolutely and the Nurses Association also released a statement saying
there is no place in Australian society for anti Semitism
or any other form of anti Muslim bigotry or ant.
And I'm like, here on a second, if someone had
said had been caught saying I want to kill all

(01:10:09):
the Muslims, I wouldn't treat a Muslim. Would you come
out and say, and you know this supposed it's like
a white it's a neo Nazi, right, you know, kill
all the Muslims. He's obsessed with Muslims. That's his one focus.
It's all he cares about it. He doesn't talk about
any other ethnicity. He's just going in on the Muslims.
Would they come out and say there is no place

(01:10:30):
in our society for hatred against Muslims or Jews?

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
Of course they wouldn't know. Of course they wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
There's a tacit understanding. I think in polite society throughout
the West that there's something a little bit fishy about
the bloody Jews. And there's certainly something a bit fishy
about that bloody nuisance state of Israel, always you know,
doing shit that we don't want it to and being
mean to the power Sinians. You go to the Middle East,

(01:11:03):
you talk to Palestenians, talk to Arabs, talk.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
To Jews, talk to Israelis.

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
They are all much more on the same page about
the nature of the problem than we are in Australia.
Like I've spoken to Arab Israelis who were born in
Palestine who are now Zionists because they're like, you don't
get us, Like you don't understand us. We are very complicated,
like meaning the Arabs, you don't understand us Arab Palestinians,
Like we are a very complicated bunch, and we won't

(01:11:28):
take yes for an answer, and like, you know, you
have to, we have to be sort of massaged in
a way. And I don't know if that's true or not,
but I know that the conversations that they're having there
are a lot more nuanced and sophisticated than this silly
binary that we have over here where we try to
superimpose all of our own white colonial historical guilt onto them.

(01:11:49):
I mean, what's basically happens since October seventh. I think
in countries like Australia and the United States, is white
well meaning people have taken the burden of colonial that
they feel guilty about.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
Them we're now very virtuous about it all.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
Yeah, in relation to our own indigenous people, in relation
to our own conflicted relationship to the British Empire and
its misdeeds, and we're just superimposing that template onto a
part of the world that we had no bloody idea
how it's working, because it's complicated and messy, and there
have been Jews and Arabs floating around that neck of
the woods, bumping into each other. They know each other
so well, so much better than anyone of us knows them.

(01:12:25):
Let them sort it out. It's their problem, that's what
That's the point I was trying to make in my peace.
Israel Is for Israelis. It's not for the Jews of
the world to make excuses for Palestinians and Arabs. They
can all sort it out, okay. Don't allow the plight
of one minority community of Arabs in the Middle East,

(01:12:48):
the Palestinians who've been shot upon six ways from Sunday
by everybody, by Arab states, who won't give them visas,
who won't give them permanent residency, who continue to bolster
Hammas and Jihadas like, let them sort that out. You
don't have a duty as an hour of Australian to
be defending Jihadis over there. You don't have a duty
as an hour Australian to be standing up against your

(01:13:11):
Jewish compatriots and fellow Australians because those Jews are somehow
proxies for a state that they've never been to and
don't have any control over abroad, Like, the last thing
we want is to become a huge multicultural warring group
of factions all representing our international obligations on the streets

(01:13:34):
of Australia with some well chosen bomb synagogues or you know,
or sucker punches to you know, people because of their
own ethnicity and multiculturalism has worked really well in Australia.
It's not screw it up by getting too obsessed about
what's going on overseas.

Speaker 1 (01:13:49):
What do you think that?

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
What do you think we get obsessed by what's going
obsease in that particular region. We don't have a we
don't have marches and protests and lots of media around
what's going on, say places of Africa.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
Well, I think because of the colonialism thing. I think
because of what I was just saying, which is that well,
I think there are two big reasons. One is what
I was just saying, which is that it's a it's
a very neat template. I think sort of easier to
understand it, much easier to understand, right, poor brown skinned person,
you know, poor brown skinned people were living there doing
their thing. Everything was idyllic, and then parachuting in from

(01:14:23):
Europe were all these white Jews who came in and
pushed them out and then were mean to them. This
is completely ahistorical. Most of the Jews in Israel are
from the Middle East. They were kicked out of other
Arab states and they're you know, they're from that neck
of the woods.

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):
There was.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
This was not a colonial project like the British in
Africa turning up and take control of.

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
The joint exactly without coming in from Turkey and Israel from.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
That area and when they were coming to a place
for thousands and thousands of years. So it was you know,
it wasn't It wasn't traditional colonialism.

Speaker 3 (01:14:53):
Coming from Georgia and Armenia and the families went in
right right exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
So I mean, in other words, it was a colonial
you know, people will often say, well, they even talked
about it as a colonial project. Yeah, Colonialism meant a
slightly different thing in the thirties and forties, just sort
of meant a benign you know, to the early Zionists,
that meant a benign way of reclaiming the territory of
their ancestors and creating something beautiful out of it, and
they did create something incredible. I mean, it's it's it's amazing.

(01:15:19):
It's to create this rich, democratic, technologically advanced country in
a part of the world that is not renowned for that.
Now I've just lost track of whorld was going. What
did you just sar ask me?

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
I said, why don't we not? Why don't we.

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
Yah soth Africa? So there's that, there's there's that component.
It's quite easy for us to look at that and go, oh, well,
that rhymes with all of the colonial crimes that we've
been complicit.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
And we can compartmentalize it. We understand.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
You know, rich white guy in suit with bombs bad,
poor black person in rubble you know, a brown person
in rubble good. That's simple, and that when we get
to Africa it's much more complicated. Hang on, they're all black,
they're all fighting each other, but they're sort of saving
China going into into Africa. Why don't we talking about
that manipulation that process?

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
Yeah, good question.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
I mean the other thing, the second thing that I
was about to point to is the way that social
media algorithms work and the way that people with vested
interests in this are able to rig social media. Like,
let me just make one point here. You remember during
when ISIS was a big thing in the War on Terror,
and you know, Syria was collapsing and they so there

(01:16:25):
was the first thing I remember going viral was the
beheading of the Wall Street journal journalist Daniel Pearl beheaded
live online. Then they and they started getting good, jee
hardists at understanding social media, much better than clumsy governments
like Israel's government and the United States, you know, where
everything has to go through some marketing department or whatever.

(01:16:47):
And this came to the sort of apotheosis of this.
The ultimate incarnation that I can remember was those downed
American pilots that they dressed up in orange jumpsuits. This
is really ingenious. They would capture an American pilot. And
this was a time when Guantanamo Bay was very controversial
and there were inmates, you know, who were alleged jihadists

(01:17:09):
who were dressed in orange jumpsuits at GITMO. They ordered online.
ISIS ordered orange jumpsuits, dressed up the American pilots in them,
locked them in cages in the desert, sprayed them with
petrol and ignited them and we watched American pilots burning
in cages in the desert dressed up as Guantanamo Bay detainees.

(01:17:31):
That's ingenious and evil and like, that's villainous, but really
shrewd right as far as manipulating public opinion. It suddenly
makes Americans go, holy hell, is there a comparison between
what they're doing what we're doing in Guantanamo Bay?

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):
Like how sav who are these people? Like?

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
It's it's shocking. And there are deep connections between ISIS
and Hamas and Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. They
talk to each other sometimes these are the same people.
They go back and forth, like, so, why are we
focused a lot on Gaza? It's not entirely an accident.

(01:18:12):
Every image that comes out of Gaza is tacitly approved
by a ji hardest terrorist group, that is the government
of Gaza, which has deep ties to ISIS style, you know,
and a lot of sort of DNA and experience from
jihadiest groups.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
Some people say, oh, well, they are not approving every article,
every image that comes out of Gaza. You can't dismiss
all of the images that come out of Gaza. I'm
not saying all the images are manufactured, what of you know,
the atrocity is there. What I'm saying is if there
was an image coming out of Gaza that showed the
world that it's not quite as bad everywhere in Gaza
and that maybe the Israelis are taking some care with

(01:18:54):
some people, or that there are letter drops from aeroplanes
which there have been, or draw knocks to make sure
that the civilians are out of the building. How long
do you think that citizen journalist would last at the
hands of Commas if they if that material was getting out.
So it's not that everything's fake, but it's that everything's
one sided, right, and they're much better at playing that

(01:19:16):
game of manipulating global opinion than the Israelis are.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
There's a terrible at it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
I mean, there's a something people should understand is there's
actually quite a long standing Jewish philosophy that you don't
explain yourself to other people, They're never gonna understand. It's
this kind of paranoid Jewish thing of like, you know what,
don't waste your breath, Like they're going to say they
give a shit about you, and then when when it
comes to crunch time, they're going to turn their backs
on you. And they're not going to allow the boats

(01:19:41):
full of Jewish refugees after the Holocaust to come and
land in America anyway, And you're going to have to
go back and you'll all be gassed. Spare yourself the hassle,
Just go and bomb me round like pathetic marketing. Yeah,
terrible marketing, terrible at marketing. They're obstinate people like and
it's so easy Israel, you know, they're just like, they're
clueless about it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
So why do we care.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
So much about Garzara? And we don't care about the
Chinese in Africa? A. We don't see anything on on
screens about the Chinese in Africa, So it's not marketed. Yeah,
it's not marketed. B The Africans aren't any good. I mean,
there's nobody with a vested interest to make that a
big issue, right, there's no equivalent of the Mullas in
Tehran or you know, the leaders of Casbolo who want
to make that an issue. And three it's complicated and

(01:20:23):
difficult for us to understand. And it's difficult. We wouldn't
spend a lot of time hovering over a video of
that if it came up on as an Instagram reel
would be like, wait, who's who are they? What are
they doing? Maybe they like it doesn't fit into that
neat template. So I think it's a it's a it's
a sort of perfect storm. It's like the perfect media
story for people who aren't terribly well informed about the

(01:20:46):
issue to feel passionate and virtuous about.

Speaker 1 (01:20:50):
Well, I think there's been a for me.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
I haven't said much today because so I'm apart from
having unbelievable talent sitting here, if you're in a cycle
of this whole region, and I think this is a
perfect explanation of at an intellectual level of the arguments,
arguments I'm saying in plural, not one if everyone and
against just the arguments. And I'd say to anybody listening
to this today, thank you for listening. But I'd say, well, equally,

(01:21:17):
get onto Josh's podcast Uncomfortable Conversations, because just go through
the episodes and find something in there that might suit you.

Speaker 1 (01:21:24):
Because this is the sort of stuff that we here
in Australia.

Speaker 3 (01:21:28):
We've got to resist being pushed by the traditional media
to take sides.

Speaker 2 (01:21:34):
Yes, exactly, and there's a lot of partisanship in the
mainstream press, not just.

Speaker 3 (01:21:38):
By the way on what's going on there on over there,
but in relation to all these things that we've been
trying to be divided on everything. Yeah, you know, and
we didn't get tired to talk about Trump and or Maske,
et cetera.

Speaker 1 (01:21:49):
But that maybe we live that for another day. Yeah,
that'd be great.

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
And I should say, since you're directing people to uncomfortable conversations,
if you if you're interested specifically in this subject and
you want to hear me in real time with how
I felt in the aftermath of October seventh. Then in
December of twenty thirteen, I did like an hour and
a half long monologue which was like one of the
most passionate and heartfelt and I think articulate ways that

(01:22:15):
I've ever done of trying to flesh through a complicated issue.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
Date again data It was.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
In December of twenty thirteen, and it was called why
Jews Are Literally Nazis. Well, I had wanted to do
a train headline, I think my own headline. Then I
wanted to name half the episodes why Jews are literally
Nazis and the other one why Muslims are literally terrorists.
But you would get the same episode, but I couldn't
figure out technologically how to release the same episode. But

(01:22:40):
just to show people how binary and stupid we were
all being, and how you click on one because you
want because that reinforces your belief. But Jews aren't Nazis
and Muslims aren't terrorists.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
We're all people. Wow, that's amazing. I'm going to go
back to listen to that myself. Thanks good, Thank yoush.
Great to be here.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#206 Josh Szeps returns for another Uncomfortable Conversation

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Crime Junkie

All Episodes

#206 Josh Szeps returns for another Uncomfortable Conversation

Stuff You Should Know